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Using data from American emergency call centers, this article focuses on the coordination, and mutual relevance, of participants’ effort to manage two forms of unit completion – sequence closing (as a method for ‘project’ completion) and concluding the occasion in which the project was pursued. In doing so, we specify the import of sequence organization as one method for conducting, organizing, and resolving interactional projects participants may be said to pursue, and describe (1) a range of possible relations between project completion and occasion closure and (2) the locations from which problems come to be introduced as parties move to resolve projects and close calls. As we show, sequence and occasion closings produced in the service of projects are fateful: they inexorably demand that the participants arrive at some alignment – or make visible their failure to do so – regarding the projects pursued in it, the status of those projects, and thus who, as a consequence, the parties are (or could have been) for another, that is, their ‘identities’. For strangers and familiars both, the management of projects and the manner in which closing is achieved matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We demonstrate that “joint attention”, usually conceived of in the psychological sciences as indicative of such minded processes as the capacity for understanding the intentional, goal-directed behavior of others, is fundamentally an interactional process, one that cannot be extricated from the ongoing flow of social activity. We examine very young children''s actions of showing objects to others, and explicate the practical procedures by which they draw and sustain another''s attention to an object, and convey “what for”—that is, what another should do in response. At issue is how children in a natural social setting (here, a daycare center) track the activities of others for felicitous moments to present objects, and design and position their actions by reference to the ongoing preoccupations, commitments, and distractions of others. Further, drawing another''s attention poses sequential implications for children''s actions which structure opportunities for parties (child and other) to display, and modify, their understandings of what sort of social exchange is transpiring between them. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Presents an introduction to the November 1, 2005 issue of the journal "Social Problems."

In this article we explore how openings in 2 types of service calls, emergency calls and directory assistance calls, differ both generally and locally from ordinary and mundane telephone calls. A focus on service call openings permits a description of the local features of the call that delineate their institutional agenda, an agenda requiring different sequential trajectories than those found in ordinary calls. Observed local differences between call types occur through the deletion, preemption, or repositioning of components of the "canonical" opening sequence that characterizes ordinary calls. Such modifications are based on participants' orientation to particular tasks and the facilitating social arrangements supporting them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which argued the horizontal and vertical comparative research in language and social interaction. Explanation of the primordial site of sociality in talk-in-interaction; Discussion of studies of mundane and institutional talk-interaction across culture and language; Studies of the acquisition of conversational structures; Accessibility of primary data in support of published analyses.

Turn taking is a fundamental structural feature of social interaction. Three major approaches to describing turn taking have emerged: stochastic, signaling, and sequential-production models. The first two treat silences between speakers as simple response latencies, whereas the third views silence as generated collaboratively by the parties to the conversation. The simple response-latency interpretation predicts a distribution of between-turn silences that declines monotonically with duration, whereas the sequential-production model predicts a periodic pattern of peaks and valleys, with an overall decline in the heights of the peaks as duration increases. Analysis of the frequency distributions of durations of silences between speakers in two-party conversations finds the periodic structure predicted by the sequential-production model. The finding is interpreted as supporting a view of social interaction as a fundamentally collaborative activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the presidential address delivered by Lewis A. Coser to the American Sociological Association on the state of the discipline and the alleged sectarian nature of ethnomethodology. He gave a prominent place in his address to an analysis of ethnomethodology as a sect. This is ostensibly for the purpose of demonstrating its role in the incipient decline of the discipline, particularly as the communication patterns said to be characteristic of the sect threatened to free exchange of information on which science depends. Ethnomethodologists mainly cite others of their ilk, to the exclusion of sociologists except when attacking them. Ethnomethodology is not a method but an approach which takes as its subject matter the study of the methods members of society jointly employ to organize the settings of the everyday activities. Coser did not provide much in the way of documentation for his assertions about the nature of the ethnomethodological approach, and in fact it appears that he has relied rather heavily on a single secondary source. It is clear that the issues raised by Coser have nothing to do with an impending crisis in the discipline or his accusation that enthnomethodology is a sect.

This paper focuses on a particular type of emotional display known in the vernacular as "hysteria," and on the "socio-logic" of such an affective state. Using calls to 9-1-1 as a case study, we discuss the ways in which the notion of "hysteria" is used in a particular occupational milieu and in certain situations to assess and account for a person's conduct. In that milieu, behaviors that might be deemed "hysterical" are those brought to the foreground by the interactional demands of the work situation. Someone is hysterical when he or she cannot cooperate in the accomplishment of some task required by the situation (as defined by those having or assuming a responsibility for what transpires in that situation). More generally, then, what might be termed a strong expression of sorrow, distress, or grief in one social context may be "hysterical" in another. Thus "hysteria" is as much interactional and (in certain institutional or work settings) organizational as emotional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that the organization of citizen calls to emergency services reveals how the sequential machinery of conversation is adapted by speaker-hearers to organize, coordinate and exhibit to one another their knowledge and purposes on particular occasions. It is in the way such knowledge is brought to bear, and purposes at hand made evident, that recurrent sequences of interactionally and institutionally relevant activity are built out of local and particular materials. Thus, the sequential organization of conversation is a fundamental resource for social activities directed to matters outside of, but addressable through talk, and for achieving regular, recurrent patterns of action in the face of varying details and circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on acknowledgement tokens and speakership incipiency in communication. Joint distribution of acknowledgement tokens and speaker conduct; Characterization of how conversation analysts tend to work; Analytic mentality involved in the quantification practices of social science.

This brief essay attempts to make certain strands of ethnomethodological thought intelligible to a general audience in the hope of opening this growing tradition to those who are interested and who may find it of some use in their own work The discussion focuses in turn upon the relationship of phenomenology to ethnomethodology, the issue of reductionism, the concept of "natural language," the relationship of context and particular in ethnomethodological work, and on the possibility of interchange between ethnomethodology and other sociological approaches.
The aim of this paper, therefore, is not to define ethnomethodology, or to provide an authoritative reply to its critics. Instead, this brief essay will attempt to make certain strands of ethnomethodological thought intelligible to a general audience, thereby, perhaps, to open this growing tradition to those who are interested and who may find it useful in their own work. Discussion will focus, in turn, on phenomenological sociology, the issue of reductionism, the concept of "natural language,'' the relationship between context and particular in ethnomethodological work, and, in conclusion, on the relationship between ethnomethodology and other concerns in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on nursing homes that have expanded in the last twenty years to become a major component of medical care, although their rapid growth has been at the expense of quality standards. This article describes an attempt to improve one aspect of nursing home service through an educational program, the effects of which were measured. The initial problem for further research lies in the precise identification of the characteristics of nursing homes most likely to possess the most serious problems of adequate care. In the process of identifying such characteristics, knowledge would be gained concerning the organizational features of the homes that tend to create the problem to begin with. In order to design intelligent programs for increasing the quality of medical care in homes for the chronically ill and aged, investigation must be made of the differences of the level of care in terms of the organizational and economic features of the institution. In this way, educational programs can be developed which are realistic and directed to those institutions in greatest need. The investigation of the relationship between such a structural index as bed capacity and degree of ambulation and internal organizational features as they related both to present care and to the facilities to implement improved patient-care programs would, if the relationship were to be verified, provide a relatively simple method of selecting institutions for such educational programs.

Discusses plans for the journal, 'Research on Language and Social Interaction.' Research on casual conversation, institutional settings, interaction mediated by computer and other new technologies and research on interaction across cultures and languages; Changes in the layout of the magazine.

The article provides information regarding the publication of the journal "Research on Language and Social Interaction." The journal inaugurates a new feature, a Review Symposium. The idea of the symposium is to take important books and have a panel of three scholars comment on them from the point of view of the study of language and social interaction. The first Review Symposium addresses sociologist Harold Garfinkel's recent book, "Ethnomethodology's Program." The three reviewers are Robert T. Craig, Eric Livingstone and Thomas P. Wilson. The second innovation of the journal is a Reader Forum. On continuously developing Web site of the journal, it has added a page for your comments on published articles and reviews, and authors and reviewers will be given the opportunity to respond. The aim is to provide a space on the Web site for commentary and debate without the lag time and limitations of printed comments. All comments will be reviewed prior to posting them in the Reader Forum. The Web site also contains short biographies and photographs of the Editorial Board and authors as well as information about the editorial scope and submission requirements of the journal.